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A friend and I have, until now, jointly held the position of Parenting Grinch for one reason: we have dreaded every school play or similar extravaganza we’ve been forced to attend.

Oh, I hear the gasps.  How cold, how callous, how awful.

But let’s get real: when your son or daughter is banging out the ninth round of chopsticks, it’s cute.  After all, your kid is a virtuoso.  But when the other kids begin scratching out unrecognizable notes on their violins, you reach for the aspirin.

Okay, so maybe that’s just me and my friend.  But I have bad news for her: she is now on her own.  In the past week-and-a-half, I’ve become a convert.

I was looking forward to my six-year-old son, “Jack’s,” kindergarten theater night with the same anticipation I might have felt if someone had told me I had to attend middle school again.  As for three-year-old “Emmie’s” dance recital: well, let’s just begin by stipulating that, as a (very) former ballet dancer, I am a dance snob.  I don’t believe kids should wear ballet slippers before six or pointe shoes before nine, and if you’re not on a par with the legendary Margot Fonteyn, the word “ballerina” should never be used in reference to you.   So three-year-olds in tutus have never been my thing.

But as most of us discover after becoming parents, bringing up kids has a funny way of turning your beliefs, snobbish or otherwise, so completely in the opposite direction that you can’t even recognize the person you were a mere two weeks before.

Jack’s rendition of a toad who grew too much, complete with yellow bug-eyes sewn to the baseball cap that topped his costume, was, of course, brilliant.  But what surprised me was how much I savored the other kids’ performances, too.  There was M_____, whom I’ve known since she was two, starring in the show as a hen in what may well turn out to be the first in a long line of acclaimed theatrical performances.  E____’s quack made me laugh, I applauded J____’s aplomb when her prop fell apart and she kept the show going anyhow, and I admired the teacher/casting director’s wisdom at her choice of super-energetic, superboy T____ to hop tirelessly about the stage, clad in pink bunny ears.  I laughed and exchanged knowing glances with other parents in the crowd, an inseparable part of a parental mutual admiration society. 

Jack’s big night was followed by the dreaded preschool dance recital this past Sunday, after which I fully expected to be raiding my refrigerator for whatever numbing alcoholic beverage I could find.  But a funny thing happened: Emmie in her little pink tutu was literally too cute for words.  (Really.  I just looked through the thesaurus and couldn’t find a single adequate descriptor.)  I placed her on the stage next to her best little friend K____, and I ran around snapping photos with an ear-to-ear grin as goofy as anyone else’s plastered on my face as children wandered into the wings, ran off the stage and generally caused chaos.  H_____ stole the show by hamming it up every possible second and both Emmie and K____ had to be persuaded and conned into returning to the stage for their second act.  But Emmie did her part like a pro (okay, the three-year-old equivalent of a pro), and I loved every minute she and her friends were on the stage.

Yes, I knew I would love watching my kids (even though, if I’m going to tell the whole truth, Jack’s face revealed that he was about as interested in his own performance as he is when his little sister asks him to play with her baby dolls).  But I was amazed at how much I enjoyed everyone else’s kids.

The reason for my transformation didn’t reveal itself to me until I was in the middle of writing this post, but now I get it.  The truth is, when our kids are in school, or daycare, or a committed activity, we don’t just follow them.  They are the ones who are the most important to us, but our interest in their lives leads us to know their friends, and the kids with whom they don’t get along, and the parents we’d like to get to know better if only we had the time, and the moms with whom we do occasionally manage to grab a proverbial cup of coffee.  We’re not just watching our kids grow up; we’re also taking part in a community.  Staring at a bunch of strangers butchering a musical number is just painful; laughing as the kids you’ve known for months or years do their best while scenery and forgotten lines tumble around them is pure, joyful entertainment.

So I may be a latecomer to this religion, but I’m definitely a convert.  With apologies to my friend who must now Grinch alone, I’ll be looking forward to the next play or recital.

But stay tuned, because next I take on archery tournaments and T-ball . . .

Earlier this week, I wrote about the ultimate Carrot to be used in raising a three-year-old: candy.

But as anyone who is familiar with basic clichés knows, the Carrot has a corollary: the Stick.  (And yes, I am speaking metaphorically.)

We have long passed the time for carrots—metaphorical or otherwise—in our efforts to potty-train three-year-old “Emmie.”  She doesn’t care about candy, she doesn’t care about toys, she doesn’t care about special underwear, special privileges or special anything.  She just doesn’t want to use the potty.

But now I’ve been given a Stick.

It turns out that all of the kids who have turned three by June at her daycare will move up then together to the Multiage Room.  Emmie has formed some strong bonds of friendship in her class, and being left behind is something Emmie despises in any circumstance.

“Do they have to be potty-trained to move up to the Multiage Room?” I asked one of Emmie’s teachers.

“We prefer it.”

I thought for a moment.  “Can I tell her that you require it?”

“Absolutely.”

A smile spread slowly across my face.  I finally had a Stick.

Since my discovery, Emmie and I have had multiple conversations about what will happen in a month-and-a-half.  Bright child that she is, I am confident that she understands the stakes and what is required for her to participate in the big move with her friends. 

I am confident, too, that she can do this; if I weren’t, I wouldn’t push this hard.  I know: lots of kids potty-train later than barely three years old; my son was one of those kids.  But Emmie has better command over her bodily functions than some adults I know, and there is no question in my mind that this is, like so many things, a matter of will for her.  So I’m not going to scold, to plead or to bribe anymore.  I simply painted the picture of actions and consequences, and now we will have to let the chips—or the poops—fall where they may.

Yesterday, one of Emmie’s little school friends wore underwear for the first time, and everyone was talking about how proud they were of M______.  “So when are you going to use the potty and wear underwear like M______?” I asked Emmie.  (Yes, yes, I know: I’m going to regret this sanction of peer pressure big time when Emmie is fifteen.)

Emmie smiled at me.  “In June, when it’s time to move to the Multiage Room.” 

That kid doesn’t miss a trick.  But we’ll see who’s laughing in June.

“’Emmie,’” I said in my most authoritative, Moses-handing-down-the-Ten-Commandments voice, “IF you cooperate, I will give you candy.”

Three-year-old Emmie’s wriggling ceased, her complaining subsided and her eyes brightened.  “Okay,” she acquiesced, suddenly quite willing to play the role of mannequin, at least for a few minutes.  And when you’re trying to get little kids to try on dozens of articles of clothing, every couple of extra seconds you can purchase is gold.

In general, I love the melting of winter into the blossoming of spring.  But since becoming a parent, one aspect of this seasonal change I dread is The Trying on of the Clothes.  (A corresponding exercise when the chill of autumn moves in is no less appealing.) 

Kids grow.  This is a fact of life; you know this even if you’re not a parent.  We actually want them to grow: this is generally considered to be a good thing.  But at least twice a year, their increase in height and weight means we parents have got to figure out which clothes still fit, which don’t, and what needs to be purchased to fulfill their needs. 

If you’ve never forced a child under the age of seven to get dressed dozens of times in rapid succession, let me paint this picture for you: you carefully establish your piles in front of the television, and put in a favorite video.  You make sure that you have appropriate beverages for you and the child (i.e., if it’s anything but water, it can be nowhere near the child or the clothes), you paste an abnormally false smile on your face and, in your very best this-will-be-more-fun-than-a-water-park voice, proclaim, “NOW we’re going to try on clothes!”  This should buy you about five minutes.  Then you need to come up with something else.

In Emmie’s case, I skipped intermediate measures and went straight for capitalist bribery, three-year-old style.  In general, I don’t object to the occasional bribes for my children, but I try not to make a habit of convincing them to do good things solely for the material reward.  But the clothes pile was too daunting, Emmie too uncooperative and the weather growing too warm too quickly (remember, spring lasts little longer than a sneeze around here; we get about two weeks between snow and eighty degrees) to mess around.  So I dangled a carrot I knew would appeal to my sweet-tooth afflicted daughter: sugar-coated, edible treats. 

The bottom line: it worked.  One piece of candy bought me ten minutes of cooperation, which, at my breakneck pace, equaled about thirty articles of clothing.  So I consider my bribe well-employed.

The only problem is, if I keep offering her candy to try on her clothes, by the time we get through the whole stack, she’ll be so big we’ll have to try everything on all over again.

It’s that time of the year again: spring!

Yes, even here in northern New England, most of the snow has melted, though my kids still need boots on the playgrounds because of all the mud.  But I folded up my heavy winter jacket the other day and tucked it into its plastic bin for summer storage.  (My husband warned me that it was too early, that I would be tempting fate, but I like to live my life on the edge.)

It’s also time for Passover again.  This is one of my favorite holidays, and that’s not just because I love gefilte fish (really, I do) and matzah balls.  Passover’s arrival signifies the end of the cold, dark winter months and the corresponding beginning of family dinners served while it’s still light out, windows that have been sealed shut now thrown open to permit fresh air to replace the stale, germ-filled stuff we’ve been breathing all winter, and children running and playing until they have no more energy remaining and they sink into a happy sleep, ready to repeat all of their craziness the next day.

Passover is a herald of spring for me, and Passover is also about children.  After all, the whole reason we tell the story of Passover year after year is so that our children can absorb it, can understand the roots of the Hebrew people in slavery and can begin to appreciate how very precious is the gift of freedom.  It’s a lesson that transcends time and place, and as our children grow older, we can adjust the seder that is the at-home Passover meal and observance to encourage our kids to think about the meaning of these concepts in their own time.

Of course, right now I have little kids.  I can transmit these lofty lessons at the seder, but I’ve got about twenty seconds and then I’ve lost them.  So my goal at this age is to make the annual Passover seder something they look forward to, something they enjoy and appreciate and becomes a part of their identity along with dousing themselves with spring mud.  In short, I want to make it fun.

Last year, an article I wrote on kids and the Passover seder ran on JewishFamily.com.  The article is still up, so here’s the link: Beyond the Afikoman.  Take a look and see if it gives you any ideas.  But don’t let these limit you; if you’re putting together your own seder, there are few limits beyond your own creativity and imagination.

Happy Pesach!

There’s only one sitcom currently being broadcast in first-run episodes on network or cable television that my husband and I still watch: Scrubs.  (Oh, to return to the days of Seinfeld and Friends.)  A few nights ago, we tucked the children into bed—for an hour or so, anyway, until the harassment began—and we sat down in the living room to watch the episode we’d Tivo’d.

It opened with a dialogue between Carla and her husband, Turk.  Carla burst into the room to make a confession about their baby daughter, Izzy.

“Turk, I totally ruined Izzy’s life.”

“Already?  It’s only 8:30.”

“I totally forgot there was a parents’ meeting for her playgroup this morning.  Now she’s gonna get kicked out.  She won’t have any friends.  She’s gonna drop out of high school.  She’s gonna start dating some gangbanger, who you’re gonna harass over and over and over again to get his life together, until he snaps and shoots you in the face OH MY GOD!”  Carla flung herself into her husband’s bewildered arms, devastated over his imminent demise.

“Hey!”  My husband turned and pointed his finger at me.  “That’s you!”

Very funny.

I don’t know what he’s talking about.  I didn’t worry too much about my son’s recent surgery and about his recovery; any mom would have spent hundreds of dollars on toys, videos and games in that situation.  I don’t stress more than any other adoptive mom when my daughter has a temper-tantrum, wondering if she will be forced to analyze my inadequate and insensitive reaction to her needs in years of expensive therapy that will bankrupt her before she’s even had a chance to pay off her crushing student loans.  It’s not abnormal to replay every socially painful interaction I ever experienced on a school bus and stay up nights wondering if I really should let “Jack” ride the bus to first grade next year or if I should drive him through high school so that his self-esteem isn’t mortally wounded, is it?

Come on, Scrubs is just a sitcom, and a wacky one at that.  I’m not like Carla.  There’s no truth to that comparison whatsoever.

Uh-oh.  What’s going to happen when my kids grow up and read this post and start to wonder if I am an out-of-control, worrying freak?  Then they’re going to begin analyzing their own childhoods, and they’ll realize everything I did wrong, and then they’ll hate me and never speak to me again, and I’ll end up in some putrid excuse for a retirement home with a woman who talks to her crocheted toilet-paper covers for a roommate . . .

The signs of aging aren’t always what we think they’re going to be.

Sure, there are the first gray hairs, followed by the fifth and the twentieth and the too-many-to-count.  There’s the declining acuity in hearing and vision, and that first time your back goes out not while engaging in some athletic endeavor, but just because you bent down to pick up a piece of paper from the floor.  There’s the inevitable increase in incidents of walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there, and the first time your kid stares at you, mortified, because your favorite song from the ‘80’s just came on VH1 and you played the accompanying air drum to perfection.

We expect all of that.

Other signs of advancing feebledom are more surprising.  Recently, for example, I faced a new assurance that I am, in fact, heading down the hill of age rather than up.

There were multiple manifestations of this particular herald.  There was the fact that I talked to numerous medical professionals over the space of several days, all of whom used the phrase, “in a woman of your age”—i.e., “women whose birthday cakes can no longer support the correct number of candles.”  There’s the unhappy truth that I can no longer indulge in the occasional, hedonistic dinner of two pieces of pizza and a couple of cookies without suffering pain severe enough to make me question whether I’m having a heart attack.  And there’s the sad acknowledgement that I now have a medical condition that has actually been immortalized in a cartoon bubble in one of my kids’ favorite books on a page intended to mock boring, old-people discussions of various, old-people topics of conversations: “Blah blah blah gall bladder blah blah blah.”

Getting older is not all bad, of course.  We’re supposed to get wiser as we age, for example.  And as my parents often say, “It’s better than the alternative.”  

But I have to confess, I didn’t see this one coming.  A few days before this incident, I had a cold, an ailment that strikes people of all ages, particularly if you are the parent of young kids.  Now, with my latest foray into my medical deficiencies, I have to wonder if the next signal of my approaching elderly status will have me reaching in the grocery store for Cream of Wheat or Depends. 

But I’m not that old, right?  Right?

Speak up when you answer me . . . I didn’t quite hear that . . .

(Technical note: I am informed that some women in their forties are actually typical candidates for gall bladder problems.  Yeah, yeah, whatever.)

Every now and then, the little topics about which I’ve blogged build and progress all at once, and I’ve got to write a post consisting of updates.  I’ve reached one of those points now.  So here’s the nutshell version of where things you’ve already read about stand now:

• Six-year-old “Jack:” Jack’s healing well from his tonsil and adenoidectomy; so well, in fact, that my admonitions to him to stop “running, bouncing, climbing and wrestling with your sister” have multiplied by a factor of, well, a lot.  He’s getting bored and whining more, which sounds bad but is actually good.  His father and I, meanwhile, are getting used to his new, high-pitched, nasal voice, which is the result—temporary, we think—of having his adenoids removed.
• Three-year-old “Emmie:” I’ve written before that Emmie is willful and lives for attention.  Lest you thought I was exaggerating, Emmie offered proof of this fact over the weekend.  She’d been increasingly frustrated last week by the attention garnered by her post-surgical brother, so over the weekend, she came down with an ear infection and a stomach virus.  Now I’ve got two kids on antibiotics who wake up crying in the middle of the night.  (Okay, okay, so I don’t really think Emmie willed herself to be sick.  But it’s awfully coincidental . . . .)
• Comcast: Here’s something I didn’t know until now: if a corporate giant has ticked you off, don’t complain quietly; instead, blog about it.  Following my post last week, I have been contacted by more Comcast representatives at various spots on the corporate ladder than I can count.  They called and emailed me with profuse apologies for inconvenience and insensitive behavior on the part of their customer service representative, took a little off my bill for the service I didn’t have and threw in a couple of free pay-per-view movies.  On the positive side, this treatment far surpasses what I am used to in the world of twenty-first century customer service.  On the negative side, a person shouldn’t have to author his or her own blog in order to obtain a little responsiveness when a promised and paid-for service goes awry. 
• Dinosaurs: A week-and-a-half ago, I took my little paleontologist to see Walking with Dinosaurs: The Live Experience.  For the uninitiated, this is a traveling show staged in large arenas and featuring life-sized, mostly realistic (so far as I know) walking, roaring and eating dinosaurs.  It’s based on the BBC documentary series, Walking with Dinosaurs, and it’s a must-see for any fan of the prehistoric.  Jack loved it, and contributed to the entertainment value for a woman seated beside us as he ran off a limitless river of knowledge about the entire Mesozoic Era, including which dinosaurs lived during which periods, who ate whom, who really was a dinosaur and who is more properly considered a flying reptile, etc.  A couple of words of advice for anyone considering attending the show, however: 1) it’s extremely loud; Jack wore earplugs; 2) the T-Rex that is the crowning jewel of the show is VERY scary; the seats actually vibrated whenever it roared and Jack hid behind me until the giant lizard left the arena; and 3) for reasons that escape me, the folks who run this thing don’t like to announce their schedule very far in advance.  Hence Jack’s and my two-hour road trip to see the show, and his upcoming repeat visit when it comes (surprise!) to a town twenty minutes away from our house in a few weeks.
• Snow: At the risk of angering the forces that control these things, I’m going to put the following statement in writing: it looks like we may not make our all-time record this year after all.  We’ve had over 115 inches of snow this year, and the record set in the winter of 1873-1874 was 122.  At this moment, when I look out my window, I can actually see large patches of muddy brown ground.  (Trust me, this is exciting.  I spied a fly on my son’s jacket when we went out for a walk yesterday and literally jumped up and down at this thrilling sign of spring.)

Okay, that’s enough updating for now.  Of course, I’m a mom, and way more than this has happened since my last blog post last week.  But be honest, you’re tired of reading now, and you’ve probably got your own kids to attend to.  So you can go now; you’re caught up enough.

It had to be an April Fool’s joke.

I’d mentally prepared for six-year-old Jack’s tonsillectomy for months.  I and my husband had engaged in more practical preparations for weeks: purchasing toys and videos, recording movies on the DVR, stocking the freezer with Jack’s favorite flavor of ice cream.  No mom could have been more ready.

Jack came through the surgery like a trooper and didn’t even seem fazed Monday afternoon.  Then the morphine administered during the procedure wore off, and Jack became a very sad little guy.  Even his voice inspired sympathy: it wasn’t the scratchy croak I’d anticipated, but instead he spoke with a whispering tone edged with a touch of melancholy.  Jack’s answers to my questions made me want to run to the nearest toy store and buy him every Lego set ever invented, and that desire was only enhanced by the fact that he obeyed every instruction and in general was the most cooperative patient any doctor, nurse or parent could ever hope to see.

Yesterday was The Morning After.  “Jack,” I asked, “would you like to watch Star Wars now?”  Jack had been angling to see this classic for months, and I’d held out, promising him that he could watch it after his surgery.

“Yes,” he whispered.

I settled Jack on the living room couch with blankets, a pillow, his ice water and his favorite stuffed animal friend.  “Okay,” I said with deliberate anticipation in my voice.  “Here we go!”  I picked up the remote and turned on the television.

Nothing happened.

My mouth open in dismay, I glanced at the cable box–which also serves as our DVR–and read the word, “Standby.”  This word, I have learned, is Comcast’s code for “you are completely screwed.”  I reset the box, I unplugged it and plugged it back in.  Still nothing.

Poor Jack, whose coping skills had temporarily been removed along with his tonsils and adenoids, burst into tears.

I called the cable company, and after being bounced around, placed on hold several times, dumped back into their automated phone tree and holding again, I finally learned that the company had performed maintenance on their system the night before that had resulted in problems for some customers.  Most people had minor problems, but my cable box seemed to be in worse shape than the others.  “We’ll have to send someone out,” the customer service representative stated.  “I can get someone out there, let’s see, um, Thursday.”

Thursday? 

“Thursday won’t do,” I replied.  I explained my situation, clarifying that although one rarely has an actual need for cable television, this was one of those very unusual days where I did.  I told her of my post-surgical six-year-old, the promised programming buried in my dysfunctional cable box.  “You guys caused this situation,” I reminded her.  “Surely you can get someone out here today.”  I also reminded her that I pay enough money each month for cable to fill my car’s gas tank several times over, even at today’s prices. 

“I can get someone out there Thursday,” she reiterated.  No apology, no sympathy, no acknowledgement of responsibility.  I may as well have been addressing the cable box.

In the end, Jack got his Star Wars.  I called around town and found a store that had it in stock and then called my husband, who dashed from work to the store, then home with the prized movies, which had now cost me considerably more money than they should have. 

I’m still waiting for the cable guy.  And no one has yet said to me, “April Fool’s.”